As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Information handling systems often use an array of storage resources, such as a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID), for example, for storing information. Arrays of storage resources typically utilize multiple disks to perform input and output operations and can be structured to provide redundancy which may increase fault tolerance. Other advantages of arrays of storage resources may be increased data integrity, throughput and/or capacity. In operation, one or more storage resources disposed in an array of storage resources may appear to an operating system as a single logical storage unit or “virtual storage resource.” Implementations of storage resource arrays can range from a few storage resources disposed in a server chassis, to hundreds of storage resources disposed in one or more separate storage enclosures.
As a specific example, a user may implement a RAID configuration including one or more servers coupled to a number of storage enclosures containing hundreds of storage resources. In a typical configuration, a RAID may include active storage resources making up one or more virtual storage resources and one or more spare storage resources (also known as “hot spares”). In such a configuration, the storage resources configured as active spares generally may remain idle until a virtual storage resource suffers a failure of one of its active storage resources, at which time the virtual storage resource may rebuild itself using an active spare. However, such a configuration may not allow for optimal wear leveling of physical storage resources. Because a spare storage resource may not be part of a RAID, the spare storage resource may be excluded from all input/output (I/O) operations, including write operations. As a result, the spare storage resource may experience little, if any, write wear while active storage resources in the RAID may experience wear. Thus, the spare storage resource may remain at or near 100% remaining lifetime while active storage resources will, over time, approach the end of their lifetimes and fail. Accordingly, existing configurations have disadvantages and inefficiencies.